Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Movement Has More Defections

On March 14, 2011, it was reported that six members of Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Movement (INM) left the list to form a new party. The group was led by Talal Zubaie, who said the new group would be called the Youth of Iraq Party. Zubaie blamed the leadership of the INM for the defections, claiming that they only thought about themselves. Zubaie said that the Youth Party would be an opposition group.

Just three days before, eight others members of the INM left to form the White Iraqi National Movement. That group was led by Hassan Aliwi and included the Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Jamal Batikh. They personally called out Allawi for failing to follow through with the National Movement’s program. They too said that they would be an opposition group within parliament.

There was another public split within the National Movement back in February. On February 21, Qutaiba Jabouri was kicked out of the list. Jabouri claimed that he had the backing of 60 of the list’s 91 parliamentarians for him to become the nominee for vice president instead of Tariq Hashemi. Hashemi is the leader of one of the six major blocs that make up the INM. Jabouri went on to blame Hashemi and Deputy Premier Saleh al-Mutlaq for his expulsion because he had earlier criticized them for only caring about their own personal agendas rather than the needs of the public. Jabouri ended up joining the White Iraqi National Movement.

The Iraqi National Movement has always been an unruly group. Allawi has only marginal control over the list, which is led by many strong personalities. Some of them like Hashemi and Mutlaq have followed their own agendas, sometimes to the detriment of Allawi, their nominal leader. Ever since the March 2010 election there have been rumors and reports that the INM was breaking apart. That finally happened this year as the government has still not been fully formed, and Allawi has been shut out of office, both of which have increased the internal divisions. Those difficulties continue, which could mean more defections in the coming weeks.

SOURCES

Alsumaria, “Two thirds of Iraqiya members name Jibouri as VP,” 2/23/11

Brosek, Raman, “Iraqiya is expected to have another political party,” AK News, 3/14/1

Joel: I should have been more specific about my sources. Blogging gets some of us (but not yourself) into bad habits. At the close of parts 2 and 4 there are indications of the sources I used, but one of the links provided in part 2 no longer works. Apart from Batatu I mainly made use of (1) Charles Tripp "A History of Iraq" (Cambridge University Press, 2000), (2) Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett "Iraq Since 1958" (I.B. Tauris revised edition 1990), (3)Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson "Hadi Never Died : Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions" (Trade Union Congress, 2006) to which I wrote a preface, and (4) for my own Part 4 the Iraqi Communist Party's English Web-site.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com